This invention relates to a camera which is used as an attachment to an optical or electron microscope in a clean room or the like for the manufacture of semiconductor devices.
Generally, products requiring ultrafine processing such as semiconductor devices are manufactured in a clean room in which the number of dust particles in the air is strictly limited. For fabrication of semiconductor devices, it is necessary to check and analyze the surface state and sectional shape of the semiconductor elements by means of an optical or electron microscope.
Conventionally, for such an analysis, a camera as shown in FIG. 4 is attached to the optical microscope or electron microscope to take photographs of the surface and section of the semiconductor elements.
The camera shown in FIG. 4 is a so-called instant camera, in which each film is loaded into a camera main body 1, and after completion of every photography, a film leader 2 projecting from a film outlet 3 is pulled out, and a film 4 is drawn out, and the developing chemical spread on the film surface is pressed widely by a roller for development.
However, when such conventional camera is used in the clean room, paper fibers and chemical particles used on the film 4 are scattered about in the space from the film outlet 3 when pulling out the film 4, and the clean room is contaminated.
Recently, with the aim of solving such a problem and also improving the efficiency of microscopic photography, a compartment case 5 for covering the film outlet 3 is detachably mounted on the camera main body 1 as shown in FIG. 5, and the film is completely developed within the camera main body 1 and is then sent out into the compartment case 5 sequentially. In such a camera, if dust is generated when the developed film is sent out, the dust is only sent into the compartment case 5, and does not drift in the clean room.
In this case, however, in order to check the developed film, when the compartment case 5 is dismounted from the camera main body 1, the dust in the compartment case 5 is released from the opening of the compartment case 5 and contaminates the clean room.
To avoid this problem, the camera main body 1 must be dismounted from the microscope without detaching the compartment case 5, and the camera main body 1 must be brought out of the clean room, and then the film must be taken out. As a result, however, the frequency of entering and leaving the clean room increases, which leads to drop of the cleanness in the clean room. Still more, since the camera main body 1 must be mounted and dismounted on and from the microscope every time, the total photographic efficiency is not improved.
There is another problem, that is, since the compartment case 5 is made of an opaque resin case, the photographic state cannot be checked during operation. When taking several pictures serially, it is necessary to check the exposure, focus, color and other factors on the first film to determine the conditions for the subsequent films, but since the developed film is contained in the opaque compartment case 5, the exposure and focus cannot be checked. In order to check them, it is necessary, as stated above, to take out the entire camera main body 1 from the clean room, and take out the film. Hence, the problems of contamination of the clean room by frequent access cannot be avoided. Or when this checking is neglected, all the films taken serially may be failures in certain cases.
Furthermore, when taking out the camera main body 1 and the compartment case 5 together from the clean room and then removing the compartment case 5, several films contained in the compartment case 5 often drop on the floor, and which picture is taken at which time may not be known, and the photograph checking is thus very difficult.